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Bangladesh's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is still sheltering in India after massive protests in her country recently, and plans to return soon for the upcoming elections.
In case you missed it, almost hundreds of people were killed after protests in mid-July and more in early August turned violent because of deadly protests. Police officers sprayed tear gas onto crowds and firing rubber bullets into masses of people, but other reports stated that some police officers had actually fired live ammunition. Numerous civilians were also killed by fires set by the protestors, which scorched buildings and cars across the country.
All of the protests were due to the reinstitution of the government's job quota system, which allocates around one-third of government jobs to Bangladeshi veterans to honor them for their war for independence against Pakistan in 1971. In 2018, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stopped the quota system due to extreme protests from young students, but after Bangladesh's High Court reinstated it in June after veterans protested, the uproar against the system began once again. Soon afterwards, the students stopped solely fighting the quota system, and ended up taking strong stances against other major political issues.
Continued unrest led to the arrival of violent protestors on her private property, forcing Hasina to leave the country and flee. She is now in New Delhi, the capital of Bangladesh's only neighbor nation, India. However, she maintains her position as prime minister, as she refused to resign from her fourth term, which was won in a controversial January election that was called out by many residents of Bangladesh. While she is gone, a military-controlled interim government has taken office, consisting of 16 advisers-- two of which are leaders of the student protests against Hasina.
Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, confirmed that she will only return to Bangladesh once the elections are held, which are scheduled in three months' time. She has been the leader of the country for over 15 years, but her time may be coming to an end this year, as she has not decided whether she wants to continue running or not. Wazed claimed that his mother had done nothing wrong, and had tried everything she could to end the unrest.
Hasina's party, the Awami League, continues to gain strong support for the election, and their primary opponent will be Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-- Zia and Hasina have traded leadership of Bangladesh in the past. However, Zia has stated that she will try to work with Hasina, not against her, to restore peace to their nation, as they need the Awami League's millions of supporters to stay peaceful in order to put a complete halt to the unrest.
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